The Other Side of the Door

by Nicci French

  I went into the bathroom and opened my sponge bag, where I kept what small amount of makeup I owned. There was some old foundation cream in there and I unbuttoned the shirt to smear it liberally over my neck and up to my jaw. It was darker than I’d expected. I must have bought it when I was tanned, except I was never tanned. I had a milky skin against which the bruise flared vividly. I rubbed in more. Now the bruise was almost obscured, but my neck was a browny orange that ended abruptly at my jaw line, like a tidemark. Above it, my face was whiter than ever. I rubbed some of the cream into it and smoothed it in, making sure it went into my hairline. Then I looked at myself carefully.

  My neck and face were almost the same colour, which was an odd kind of bronze. I rummaged in the sponge bag, but there was nothing very useful in it, so I went back into the bedroom and found the box of toiletries I’d been going to throw away. There was a stick of very pale makeup that I vaguely recalled had been used in a school production of Grease. I used that to whiten the bronze. Now my face looked thickly tan-coloured and slightly streaky; if I ran a nail along my skin, a thick line of paler skin emerged. I completed the effect by covering the whole lot in Grease face powder. I put on some mascara, because my eyes seemed small and sunken in my matt, pasted face.

  To complete the effect, I dabbed gloss on my lips and sprayed some perfume an aunt had once given me down my cleavage, onto my bloody feet and into the air of the room. There. I buttoned up the shirt and wrapped the scarf round my neck.

  I had about five minutes. I put a plaster on my leg, laid newspaper over the kitchen floor to soak up the last of the milk and protect people from the broken china, swept anything that was on the table into an empty box that I pushed against the wall, then took Hayden’s note and put it in my underwear drawer. I was picking up damp towels when the doorbell rang. It was Joakim.

  ‘Hello, Bonnie,’ he said, and blushed. ‘You look very pretty today. Have you caught the sun?’

  After

  ‘Hello, Bonnie.’

  When Joakim appeared at my door, carrying a guitar case, smiling, it felt as though he had stumbled on me in a car crash, surrounded by crushed metal, broken glass, covered with blood, and he simply hadn’t noticed. I let him in and wondered if I had forgotten about a rehearsal. Then I thought he might have come to tell me in person that he had to drop out of the performance. What a relief that would have been. Then we really couldn’t have continued.

  But he wasn’t pulling out. He told me he thought we needed another song, something people could dance to, but he wanted to try it out on me before he sprang it on the others. He had the sheet music with him and I had barely closed my door before he had got the guitar out and was strumming the chords for me. At any other time I would have been caught up with his enthusiasm. I got out my own guitar and played along with him but it was like watching someone on television being enthusiastic. I hardly felt I was in the same room.

  What I was trying to tell myself was: It’s over. Or, at least, it’s as over as it ever will be. Finally it made sense. Neal had put himself at terrible risk for me and so, in her own peculiar way, had Sonia. In fact, she had done it a second time, when she had come back to the scene to save me from my hopeless self. There was more. The question I hadn’t been able to get out of my head ever since I’d realized the truth was whether I should be grateful to Sonia on a whole different level. Had she done what I would have done if I’d had the courage? Had she done what I secretly wanted to do, even if I was unable to admit it to myself? After all, I had let Hayden hit me and apologize and hit me again and still I hadn’t left him. What would I have said if I had been told about someone who had behaved as I had? I would probably have described her as weak and pathetic. If it was a friend of mine, would I have had the guts to do something about it, to help her, the way Sonia had helped me?

  With the other part of my brain, the automatic part, I played along with Joakim, nodding with him, seeing how the music would work for the group. But I couldn’t give myself up to it. There were the old reasons for that. The image of Hayden dead on the floor, which never left me. The process of wrapping him up and lugging him out, like something to dump on a skip. The thought of him there in the dark, cold, deep water. I would never lose that, I knew. But even so, it was over, and I finally knew the truth, and yet it was still nagging at me, spluttering and fizzing inside my head.

  It was so easy to picture. When Sonia had told him to lay off me, Hayden would have been startled at first but then he would have become angry, and the guilt he felt, the recognition that he was in the wrong, would have made him angrier still. He would have started shouting, become incoherent and, as words failed him, he would have lashed out. He’d show Sonia – he’d show the self-righteous bitch what drove men to be violent. Except Sonia wasn’t like the others. She wouldn’t put up with it. She would fight back. Hayden was a coward. His violence was directed against people who wouldn’t fight back. There was no doubt in my mind that, in the way Hayden lived his life, he had invited something like this. It was just a question of when he ran into someone like Sonia, rather than someone like me. Hayden and Sonia, an immovable object and an irresistible force.

  Joakim was smiling as he watched me play and realized I was accepting his idea, that we really would be playing this funny old bluegrass tune he had downloaded from somewhere or other. I had trouble with one fiddly chord change and he laughed.

  ‘Are you still deferring your university entry?’ I asked.

  ‘You mean, now Hayden’s dead and no longer an evil influence on me?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m still deferring. All my life I’ve done things just because my parents thought it was the right thing to do. This isn’t anything to do with Hayden any longer, it’s about what’s right for me.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I’ll never forget him, you know.’

  ‘That’s good too,’ I said. ‘He rated you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  Joakim hurriedly got his stuff together. I think he had tears in his eyes.

  ‘So you think it’ll work?’ he asked, snapping his guitar case shut.

  ‘It sounds good,’ I said. ‘As long as we can write an easy enough part for Amos, we should be all right.’

  ‘It’ll be weird doing it without Hayden,’ he said. ‘You’re probably sick of me going on about that.’

  ‘I’m not going to say it’s what Hayden would have wanted, because that’s the sort of rubbish people say about the dead, but it’s probably the right thing to do. We signed up for this. We need to do it.’

  The moment I shut the door I felt as if a little explosion had gone off in my head, as if a gremlin had got into my stupid, non-functioning brain and done my thinking for me while my mind had been dealing with Joakim. Sonia and Hayden. Hayden and Sonia. It wasn’t any kind of answer or even an idea. But there was something there – something that had been worrying away at me. I tried to think hard. I tried to force myself to remember. What would an intelligent person do in my situation?

  First, where was the beer mat? If you’re looking for a beer mat, the best place to start is in a pile of beer mats and there it was, the beer mat on which Nat had written his number. I dialled it.

  Nat didn’t seem especially pleased to hear from me. ‘It’s been a bloody nightmare,’ he said. ‘There’s this detective, this woman, she doesn’t like me. They’ve talked to me about three times. The same questions. I’ve only got the same answers.’

  ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about,’ I said. ‘You’re innocent.’

  ‘How do you know I’m innocent?’

  That was a good question. Too good a question.

  ‘You just wouldn’t do something like that,’ I said feebly. ‘You’re not the type.’

  ‘That’s not much help.’

  ‘Actually, I need help from you,’ I said.

  ‘From me?’

  ‘I went to a party with Hayden, ju
st a few days before he died. You were there. Do you remember?’

  ‘Kind of. I wasn’t completely at my best.’

  ‘There were old friends of Hayden’s. One was called Miriam. Dark hair, big eyes – she was smoking.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Do you know who she is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You were at the party.’

  ‘So were about two hundred other people.’

  ‘Could you find out for me?’

  There was a sort of groan. ‘Sure, I’ll ask around. If I hear anything, I’ll call you some time.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘This is really, really, really urgent. What I’d like you to do is phone anyone you know and ask them who this Miriam was. Then you can ring me, or they can ring me. I’ll give you my number. Do it now. I’m going to sit by my phone and I want you to ring me back within ten minutes. If you don’t, I’ll keep annoying you.’

  The groan resumed. ‘Yeah, yeah, OK, I’ll do my best.’

  I didn’t just sit by the phone. I changed into something smarter, some striped trousers and a pale blue shirt. Serious-looking. I found a jacket and put my purse, a pair of sunglasses and my keys into the pockets. Just as I was wondering if I needed anything else, the phone rang. The voice asked for me by name.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘My name’s Ross. You don’t know me. Nat said you want to find out about Miriam Sylvester.’

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s great. Thanks for calling.’

  ‘So what do you want to know about her?’

  ‘I don’t want to know anything. I just want to talk to her.’

  ‘All right. You got a pen?’

  It was that easy.

  On the train I stared out of the window the whole way to Sheffield. I’d handed over a fistful of notes for my return ticket. I wondered if I was being stupid. Should I have done this over the phone? No. It had to be face to face if it was going to be done at all. The last time I’d been on a train out of London it had been with Hayden, an impulsive journey to the seaside just to show we could do it if we wanted to, go anywhere without anyone knowing. Every field, every piece of green had been like a secret message of escape, a sign that we didn’t need London, that we were not trapped by our duties and responsibilities. This time it felt different. The countryside was just something to be got through. It was probably at its best in the late-summer sun, but what was the point of it? What did people do there? I saw people playing cricket, tractors, church after empty church. I started to nod off and worried that I might sleep through She?eld and wake up somewhere far to the north. So I drank a cup of horrible black coffee to keep me conscious.

  I got into a taxi at the station and read out the address that the man I had never met had given me over the phone. ‘Is it far?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said the driver.

  As he drove, I looked out of the window. Another place I’d never been before, and because of that the shops and the people seemed just a little bit foreign, a little bit interesting. I knew that if I stayed a day or two the novelty would go and it would look the same as everywhere else. But I wasn’t going to stay a day or two. He turned off a shopping street into an area of old red-brick terraced houses on a hill. Some had been gentrified and others hadn’t. Number thirty-two, the address I’d been given, was definitely one of the houses that had been. I got out and, once again, paid more than I’d expected. I knocked at the door. God, wouldn’t it be stupid if nobody was at home? But the door opened.

  ‘Miriam Sylvester?’ I said, although I had immediately recognized the woman I’d talked to on the stairs at the party. Now she was just wearing jeans and a red T-shirt and her face, then exotic with kohl and lipstick, was bare of makeup.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, slightly puzzled. ‘You must be the woman who rang earlier?’

  ‘Yes, I talked to your, erm, er . . .’

  ‘Partner, Frank, yes,’ she said.

  Her partner. And I remembered her flirting with Hayden on the stairs. Because that was what women seemed to do around Hayden, like bees around honey.

  ‘We met at a party,’ I said. She looked blank. ‘You’d heard about me. As far as I remember, you’d heard something about me and my banjo.’ She looked less blank but a little more puzzled. This wasn’t starting well. Was it possible I’d wasted my time? ‘I was there with Hayden Booth.’

  ‘Hayden,’ she said, and her expression changed to one of intense engagement. ‘Oh, God, Hayden. I read about it in the papers. It’s the most terrible thing. At first I couldn’t believe it was the same person. Yes, come in, please.’

  I’d worried that she might be so freaked out by the thought that I’d come all the way from London to see her that she might not want to talk to me. But it quickly turned out that that was exactly the advantage. I was her first-hand source for the whole Hayden story. She invited me in, sat me down in her kitchen, offered me lunch and, when I turned that down, made me mug after mug of coffee. Being questioned in detail by a virtual stranger about Hayden’s death and the police investigation was pretty much the thing in the world that I least wanted, but I thought it prudent to go along with it. So I sat there for more than an hour and answered her questions and listened to her talking about how shocked she was. I calculated that the more I responded to her the more she would have to respond to me.

  And so, after she had asked every possible question she could think of, after she had talked about the death of someone else she knew, after she had cried a bit and I had comforted her, after all that, I took a deep breath and asked her the question I had travelled right across England to ask.

  Before

  Amos and Sonia arrived shortly after Joakim. Amos was wearing a pair of flowery shorts and a clashing T-shirt and looked slightly ridiculous and very happy – happy in a way I remembered from the past. He kissed me on both cheeks, heartily, and I thought: He’s completely over me at last.

  He was holding Sonia’s hand when I opened the door to them and he didn’t let go of it as they entered the flat, so that they had to wind their way through the mess into the kitchen. Sonia was wearing a sleeveless white shift that made her dark hair and eyes seem even darker;her skin was creamy and clean. She glowed with a health that made me feel like a creature who’d been found under a stone, squirming in the sudden unwelcome light. She kissed me too, then held me by my shoulders and said in a quiet voice, so Joakim and Amos wouldn’t overhear, ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Me?’ I feigned surprise. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘You look a bit . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tired, maybe.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘You haven’t been under a sun-lamp, have you?’

  ‘Am I the kind of person who would go under a sun-lamp?’ I gave a high, hysterical squeal that was meant to be a laugh. ‘Coffee? Joakim, Amos? I’m making a pot. Or would you prefer something cool?’

  ‘Your flat’s amazing,’ said Joakim, enthusiastically, staring round it.

  I saw it for a moment through his eyes. It wasn’t just a mess, it was almost surreal. ‘You mean a complete tip.’

  ‘My dad would never let me live like this.’

  ‘Quite right too.’

  ‘It’s like a statement.’

  ‘Bonnie taking her stand against the bourgeois world,’ said Amos. He winked at me. I tried to smile but my face felt stiff and swollen.

  Everything was happening at a remove; everything was unreal. Not long ago Hayden had been leaning over me, hand around my throat and an ugly snarl transforming his face into a stranger’s, and now here I was, making conversation with people who were behaving as if they knew me.

  I drank a cup of coffee, strong and bitter and without milk, then another. My hands were shaking. I wanted to be alone in a cool, shaded wood in autumn. I felt dirty and ashamed.

  Neal and Guy arrived together. Guy was wearing a suit and when he took off the grey jacket his shirt was dark with sweat at the armpits and down the back. He rolled up his sleeves and mopped h
is forehead with a white handkerchief. I opened the windows in every room but it still felt claustrophobically hot.

  ‘There’s not really room for us all here,’ I said.

  ‘And Hayden hasn’t arrived yet.’

  ‘No,’ I said. My voice was like dry leaves scraping against each other, and I could feel a flush prickling across my face, under the camouflage. ‘Perhaps we should start without him. You know what he’s like.’ Did that sound natural? Didn’t anyone see? Couldn’t anyone tell?

  ‘Who the hell does he think he is?’ grumbled Amos, and Joakim gave him a dirty look.

  ‘Let’s assume he won’t be here,’ said Neal, in a quiet voice that sent a small shudder of dread through me. He was looking at me appraisingly. I felt his eyes on my face, my throat, and all at once I was sure he could see right through me – through the makeup and the scarf and the stupid, stupid frilly shirt, through all my futile pretence and all my transparent lies.

  ‘Shall we start by clearing the living room a bit?’ said Sonia. ‘We can pull everything back against the walls.’

  Everyone started picking up chairs, moving boxes. I saw Sonia shifting pieces of china that seemed to have made their way in here from the kitchen. I was starting to feel sick, but if I could just get through the next couple of hours, it would be all right. Guy was talking about some terrible accident there had been in the early hours of the morning on the M6, a whole family killed. Sonia was issuing instructions to everyone and miraculously giving the room a kind of order. Amos kept bumping his shins and cursing. I thought of the note from Hayden, now lying in my underwear drawer. What was it he needed to say to me and why was I even thinking of going round to hear him out? If I went, I could tell him that I never wanted to see or hear from him again and he had to pull out of the group. But if I did, I’d see his face, ravaged with guilt, and he would speak words of passion and torment and I might – No, no, I wouldn’t. Of course I wouldn’t. Never again. Not ever. I hated him. A man who hit women, a man who left women without a backward glance. I hated him. I did.